As a retired professor from several private Bible Colleges and Seminaries, I can relate to this story I want to share with you. Sometimes it’s not the big things we discover that can alter our lives, but the small things. Never let them go until you’ve learned all you can.

One day in class, a student named Morrie told the teacher that he had an exercise for everyone to try. They were to stand, facing away from their classmates, and fall backward, relying on another student to catch them. This wasn’t all that new, and many of the students were uncomfortable with this. However, the teacher finally agreed just to see what secret Morrie was talking about. The student pairs were chosen, and for the one who was selected to fall backward first, it proved harder than they thought. Just as they start to fall backward, they stopped themselves. A lot of the students laughed in embarrassment.

Finally, one student, a thin, quiet, dark-haired girl who almost always wore bulky, white fisherman sweaters, crossed her arms over her chest, closed her eyes, leaned back, and without flinching, fell backward like one of those Lipton tea commercials where the model splashes backward into the swimming pool.

For a moment, it looked like she was going to thump on the floor. But at the last instant, Morrie, who was assigned as her partner grabbed her shoulders and lifted her back up to her feet. “Wow,” several students yelled. Some clapped. Morrie smiled. “You see”, he says to the girl, “you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see. You have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, they must feel that they can trust you even when they’re in the dark. Even when they’re falling.”1

When we see how true this is as we learn to trust others, how much truer it is when we learn how to trust God. This was undoubtedly true of Abraham,2 and a lesson learned by Joshua,3 and David,4 and his son Solomon,5 the Apostle Paul,6 and many others. I tried to teach this to my four-year-old son by having him jump into my arms from the first step on our stairway at home. At first, he was reluctant, but after he became convinced, it wasn’t long before he was jumping from the second, then the third, and finally the fourth step without hesitation.

If you have never trusted God to catch you when He’s asked you to take a leap of faith, then you have not learned what complete trust is all about. Remember, trust is the lifeblood of faith. Without trust, your faith will be weak or nonexistent. So let’s all start trusting God more and more every day. – Dr. Robert R Seyda